North Carolina legislators are considering legislation that critics say would ban wearing respirators or other masks in public for health reasons — but allow groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to wear face coverings.
“Thought the North Carolina mask ban couldn’t get any worse? Buckle up!” read a May 14 post on X, formerly Twitter, adding: The bill “has specific carve outs for entities like the KKK to continue wearing hoods in public.”
More than 172,000 people saw the post and nearly 400 accounts shared it, according to X’s metrics.
The post could give people the impression that North Carolina legislators are going out of their way to grant new freedoms to groups like the KKK. That’s not the case.
About the bill
This spring, North Carolina legislators introduced a bill to prevent lawbreakers from getting away with crimes by covering their faces. The bill passed the state House of Representatives less than a month after students at UNC-Chapel Hill wore masks while protesting Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza.
A law enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 allowed North Carolinians to wear masks in public to protect their health. House Bill 237 would strike that language from the law. The bill would also increase a defendant’s misdemeanor or felony charge by one criminal class if they’re found guilty of committing a crime while also wearing a mask.
Legal experts disagree over whether the bill’s language would make it illegal for people to wear a mask for health reasons.
Supporters of the bill say its intent is clear — to prevent people from trying to conceal their faces and identities while committing a crime — while critics point out it would delete a legal provision allowing people to wear masks for health reasons. The proposal doesn’t explicitly allow for health-related masking under the part of the bill that lists exemptions, critics say.
That brings us to the allegation about the KKK. The person who posted the claim about “carve outs for entities like the KKK” didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Republicans, Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina told PolitiFact they disagree over how existing laws apply to the KKK. But all agreed that the proposed bill does not introduce any new mask rights for the KKK or similar groups.
Existing mask laws
For decades, North Carolina has banned people from wearing masks in public. State law says that nobody over the age of 16 can be on public properties — such as roads, sidewalks or alleys — while trying to conceal their identity with a mask, hood or device.
At the same time, the law has allowed for a few exemptions: Holiday costumes and masks used in theatrical productions, for instance, are OK.
Existing law also allows an exception for members of societies that use masks, hoods or disguises as part of a “parade, ritual, initiation, ceremony, celebration.” Because House Bill 237 leaves that portion of the current law intact, some legislators believe it will continue to allow for demonstrations by the KKK.
Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger’s office argued that the KKK is effectively banned by a collection of laws passed in the 1950s. Legislators in 1953 banned “secret societies” whose purpose is to violate state laws or who assemble while their members are illegally armed.
Other state laws ban people from holding meetings while wearing hoods, wearing hoods on someone else’s property, and burning crosses in public places or on any property that’s not their own without permission.
The laws are meant to target the KKK, as PolitiFact NC has previously reported.
However, enforcement of the existing laws has been lax, said state Sen. Sydney Batch, D-Wake. Batch said there were no major legal repercussions for KKK members who protested in Hillsborough without a permit in 2019 or masked members of the Proud Boys extremist group who disrupted a New Hanover County School board meeting last year.
Also, legal experts for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina see an opening in North Carolina’s laws that could allow the KKK to demonstrate so long as they do so peacefully and with permission.
State law only bans secret societies whose purpose is to “violate or circumvent the law,” said Reighlah Collins, a policy lawyer for the state ACLU chapter. That narrow provision is key, she said.
“As long as a representative of the KKK gets permission from the municipality or County Commissioners where the parade/ceremony/etc takes place, then they would be able to wear hoods/masks in public pursuant to the exception,” Collins said.
Still, she said, claims about carve outs for the KKK in House Bill 237 are misleading.
“Laws about secret societies and prohibited secret societies and masks have been on the books since the ’50s,” Collins said. “These are not new provisions that specifically are intended to protect the KKK.”
Our ruling
The social media post said a North Carolina bill “has specific carve outs for entities like the KKK to continue wearing hoods in public.”
House Bill 237 does not mention the KKK at all and does not introduce any new exemption or “carve out” for similar groups to wear hoods in public.
Existing state laws may allow the KKK to demonstrate while wearing masks and House Bill 237 leaves that law intact. However, legal experts disagree over the effect of that existing provision and whether it prohibits the organization from gathering.
The social media post contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. That’s our definition of Mostly False.
